BERLIN – Municipal officials are expected to discuss the potential sale of a portion of Heron Park next week.
Mayor Zack Tyndall confirmed this week that he and the council would be discussing Heron Park at the meeting scheduled for June 26.
“It will be a discussion item between the mayor and council,” Tyndall said.
Last year, the town entered into negotiations with Palmer Gillis’s Coastal Ventures Properties LLC — one of two entities that submitted a proposal for the Heron Park property. The initial proposal from Gillis offered the town $1.5 million for three parcels — parcel 410, 57 and 191 — and would involve partial demolition of the existing structures to create a commercial project on the site. The trails and pond on the north end of the property would be unaffected. Since then, Tyndall, Councilman Jack Orris and Councilman Jay Knerr, along with Town Administrator Mary Bohlen and Town Attorney David Gaskill, have served on a subcommittee to work with the company to negotiate an agreement.
In recent weeks, however, two residents have filed complaints with the Open Meetings Compliance Board (OMCB) regarding closed meetings town officials held regarding Heron Park. In April, resident Jason Walter filed a complaint with the OMCB regarding closed session council meetings that had been held regarding Heron Park on March 21, 2022, July 25, 2022, and March 23, 2023. He also said meetings by the Heron Park subcommittee — meetings that consisted of the mayor, two council members, the town administrator and the town attorney — should have been advertised and open to the public. More recently, resident Edward Hammond wrote to the OMCB alleging that the town used the RFP process to evade the Open Meetings Act. He supplemented his complaint last week after he said Gillis reached out to him to talk about his proposal. Hammond doesn’t believe Gillis should get a year’s worth of “secret meetings” with town officials when the public will only have a few days before the June 26 meeting to share their thoughts with elected officials.
“The town got the cart before the horse,” Hammond wrote in his amended complaint. “It needed to have decided what it wanted to do with the land before issuing an ‘RFP.’ Since the town did not have a clue what it wanted to do with the land when it issued the ‘RFP,’ unless there was a secret understanding between the mayor and Mr. Gillis who were already negotiating, the ‘RFP’ simply functioned as a manner to avoid public input and public meetings.”
Gillis, however, said he doesn’t understand exactly what Hammond’s concern is. He said the RFP was available to the public on the town’s website and, once municipal officials decided to pursue his proposal, his meetings with the subcommittee only addressed technical details. He said they talked about issues such as traffic studies, environmental issues and public roads.
“I believe we stayed within the guardrails of our response to the RFP,” he said. “Everything we talked about stayed within the lane of what we submitted. It just took forever to do it.”
While he’s heard concerns from the public in recent weeks about the price his proposal put on the land, he said that initial price had increased. He added that even when the property was a functioning processing plant, it had been listed at $1.9 million. The town purchased the property for $2.5 million in 2016.
“The town is retaining 70% of it,” Gillis said. “It seems like we’re paying double what they paid.”
Knerr said the subcommittee met with Gillis several times to discuss the sale and development of the portions of Heron Park Gillis plans to buy.
“Although there seems to be disagreement among town residents as to whether the town should keep or sell the properties, the committee is ready to make a recommendation to the full council,” Knerr said. “There are definitely pros and cons to keeping it versus selling it, and the committee kept that in mind throughout our discussions.”
Knerr added that there was a deadline associated with the $500,000 strategic demolition grant the town received for the property so a decision needs to be made soon.
Orris said that after the months of meetings he was eager to share the details of the subcommittee’s efforts with the public.
“I believe that we are finally ready to present to the residents and council what the group has been working on for their review and comment,” he said. “I think we should have an open discussion with public comment. I’d hate to have the topic pushed to the end of the meeting so I’m hopeful the mayor will place it on the agenda as a specific item.”
Orris said that as far as the subcommittee meetings, town officials had simply been trying to nail down an agreement with Gillis.
“Speaking for myself, from the beginning of this, my mode of operation and understanding was to drill down topics of the RFP with the developer, discuss possible uses of the parcel(s) up for sale and ultimately, a sale price,” he said. “The intention was then to present a package to the council and the public for review.”
He says that moving forward, he doesn’t want the town to relive what has already been done.
“In the disposition discussion and learning from the purchasing experience, we held a public listening session and public updates throughout the past year. I believe we could’ve done a bit better on the substance of those updates, but the product of doing – what I believed to be – our due diligence will hopefully be presented at Monday’s meeting. The best course will be presenting all options to the public, timelines/process of selling if that’s how the council chooses to go, and possibly a ballot measure would be appropriate and let the people have a direct say. That all should be discussed Monday night.”
Gillis said he’d be in attendance Monday though Tyndall hadn’t made it clear whether he’d be permitted to be involved in the discussion.
“We’re going to be there to listen and be available for questions and answers if possible,” he said.
